15,000 kids in North & East study under trees: Army camps mushroom

By Rathindra Kuruwita | Lakbima News
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Fifteen thousand school children in the North and East are compelled to study under trees since schools have been converted into IDP and transit camps and detention centres, while the government spends millions on military bases, education department sources said. The situation is grave in Vavuniya, Omanthai, Maithadi and Kilinochchi where the majority of schools function in temporary shelters with minimal facilities.

“Omanthai Maha Vidyalayam is used as a transit camp for people who are returning to their villages from IDP camps. Although a year has passed after the civil war ended, no steps have been taken by the government to either build new shelters for IDPs, or to rebuild schools in another location,” said an education ministry official.

Meanwhile, General Secretary of Sri Lanka Teacher Services Union (SLTSU) Mahinda Jayasinghe told LAKBIMAnEWS that there is also a massive dearth of teachers in the North and the East, which is having a negative impact on education. This shortage mainly affects subjects such as English where the education authorities are dependant on pensioners who have been re-enlisted on contract basis.

“Not only are thousands of students continuing their education without buildings, water or sanitary facilities, these schools also need hundreds of teachers,” Jayasinghe said. “A lot of teachers who worked in these schools have either left for Colombo or have left the island. Even 14 months after the end of the war the government has not appointed Tamil medium teachers to these areas.”

Jayasinghe added that there are over 500 Tamil medium teachers in the 2010 batch at teacher training centres in the island, but none of them have been given appointments because of the lack of funds.

“Each year around 3000 trained teachers are given appointments around this time of the year, but this time that is not the case. Appointment letters are not given since no funds have been allocated in the 2010 budget. This means that thousands of Tamil youth will sit for O/L and A/L exams partially ready.”

Meanwhile in a recent visit to Wishwamadu Army Commander Major General Jagath Jayasuriya claimed that with the establishment of new army camps, buildings which have been occupied for security purposes will be returned to schools.

© Lakbima News

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Flagship of Russian Black Sea Fleet in Lanka

Daily Mirror
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The Flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet the Guard missile cruiser “Moskva” will arrive in the port of Colombo on August 13 for a friendly visit. The “Moskva” will be at the port till August 15 with 41 officers and 464 non-commissioned officers and seamen.

The 187 metre long “Moskva” is a Slava (Glory) class guided missile cruiser. These missile cruisers are powerful units intended for actions against surface fleets. Constructed during the late seventies through to the eighties this class follows the Soviet naval practice of what western naval critics have termed, putting all the ship’s armament “in the shop window”.

Anti-aircraft weapons include eight SA-N-6 surface-to-air missile silos (eight missiles per silo) located between the funnels and the after end of the hangar. Contained in vertical launch tubes, these missiles are intended to provide a Soviet battle group with defence against carrier or land-based aircraft firing contemporary stand-off munitions such as anti-ship missiles.

© Daily Mirror

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Sri Lanka: Air Force Commander lays siege to a world heritage Site

By Gazala Anver | The Sunday Leader
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Air Force Commander, Air Chief Marshal Roshan Goonatilake, is illegally constructing a house in Sudugalla, in the protected Knuckles conservation forest area. Sajeewa Chamikara, Program Manager of the Sri Lanka Nature Forum said they are convinced the house indeed belongs to the Air Chief.

The Sunday Leader drew a blank when we contacted the SLAF Spokesperson, Group Captain Janaka Nanayakkara. He refused to confirm or deny the story.

However, a fellow officer and close associate of the Air Force Commander, requesting anonymity revealed that the Commander is in fact building a house in Sudugalla.

The house is a two storied structure, with eight bedrooms and attached baths and is fully tiled, according to Sajeewa Chamikara, who says it has been built on 12 perches of land in Knuckles.

Chamikara, having visited the site said it has been built as a holiday bungalow. “It is built just like a hotel, so it has to be his holiday bungalow,” he said.

“We are aware of illegal constructions in Sudugalla,” says the Divisional Secretary of the Laggala-Pallegama area, P.H.M.M. Premasinghe, member of the committee appointed under the National Environmental Act. He said that after investigations, they found out that the land is under the name of a man called Rohitha Silva and that the environmental authorities have already contacted him.

Rohitha Silva, according to Premasinghe, owns the land but not the building. Silva is yet to respond to a letter demanding that he demolish the newly built structure on the land as it is illegal. Land can be bought and privately owned around the Knuckles Conservation Forest, Premasinghe said, but special permission has to be secured before any form of construction can take place. In this case, Premasinghe asserted such permission has not been sought or given. Under these laws, any construction has to be first approved by the committee appointed under the National Environmental Act.

This however, the Sri Lanka Nature Forum claims, has not been done. Furthermore, such illegal constructions are rapidly leading to the extinction of a few rare endemic and endangered species, some of them found exclusively in this region.

Premasinghe meantime added that they had also heard that the house is in fact owned by the Air Force Commander, but they don’t have proof yet. Central Environmental Authority Chairman, Charitha Herath, also said that Rohitha Silva has been contacted by the authorities but that he does not know if Roshan Goonetilaka is involved. Despite countless attempts to get through to the Air Force Commander, a male who answered Goonetilaka’s mobile telephone reiterated, “he does not want to talk to you.”

Knuckles was recently declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has also been declared as a conservation forest in 2007 and as an environmental protection area in 2008. The area is under protection of the National Environmental Act as well as the Soil Protection Act.

The other law-breakers

Names of other people, who also illegally constructed in the Knuckles Conservation Forest area, have been revealed by the Sri Lanka Nature Forum.

Among those is that of a foreign researcher called Dr. Ditas for building in Giriswatte, Hafnin Musaji in Riwastan, the owner of Kottegoda Batik in Pathana and Upul Halangoda in Cobert’s gap.

The Central Environmental Authority meanwhile has been taking steps to stop these constructions.

Chairman, Charitha Herath said that they have a directive, which includes sending a warning letter to the offender and informing the police about this development.

They are currently also observing the situation from their Kandy office and if their directives don’t work out, they would take the matter to court.

He said that his inspecting teams are working on finding the owners and bringing this situation to a close. However, apart from Rohitha Silva, they have not been able to name any of the other owners up to date.

© The Sunday Leader

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Sri Lanka Police arrest student union leader in Matara

Photo courtesy: Indi Samarajeewa

Colombo Page
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Matara police today arrested a student union leader of Sri Lanka's Ruhuna University in the South.

President of the Management and Finance Union of the Ruhuna University, Udaya Wickramanayaka was arrested by the police for allegedly holding the Ruhuna University Vice Chancellor hostage on June 16.

Matara Police denied the initial claims by the university students that Wickramanayaka was abducted and said he was arrested for the charges of hostage taking.

According to the police, they were searching for nine other university students who have been allegedly involved in the incident.

© Colombo Page

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Sri Lanka: Economy continues to show deep uncertainty

By Kumar David | Lakbima News
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In my column of 27 June (Budget deficit and public debt set to balloon) I dealt with the 2010 budget and specifically with the budget deficit and the national debt. I did not touch on foreign trade, balance of payments and the foreign component of debt since it was opportune to do so when 2010 trends become clear. The Central Bank has released the foreign trade figures for the first four months of this year (January-April) and now it is possible to comment. Things look bad - not immediately but over the next three to five years.

The three statistics, budget deficit, total government debt and foreign trade have to be taken together to get a partial picture of a country’s economic disposition. Now we are in a position to make an assessment of the last named. Let me remind you of what I said on 27 June regarding the first two.

The Budget Speech I said was a bit of a con, and disagreed with what Sarath Amunugama, PBJ and the Finance Minister (President Rajapaksa ) had laid before us, and I asserted that the budget deficit for 2010 will be above 10% of GDP, maybe even over 12%. Second, I argued that the Debt to GDP ratio would be well over 90% by the end of the fiscal year. The Budget Speech promised that these figures would be brought down to 8% and 80% respectively; time will prove that both expectations are illusory.

Balance of payments: The first four months

Imports for the first four months of 2010 increased by a massive 42.9% to $4.19 billion, while exports increased by a mere 10.7% to $2.31; therefore our trade deficit was $1.88 billion, a staggering 122% increase over the same four month period in 2009. I do not expect a significant recovery in any of the global capitalist economies so oil prices may remain moderately stable (natural disasters and military conflict may cause spikes) but there are indications that food prices are on the rise. Oil will rise moderately later in the year as winter approaches in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore the sober view is that our annual foreign import bill will be well above three times $4.19 billion; it is likely to be about $14 billion for the whole of year 2010.

On the merchandise export side things are not good at all. The loss of GSP+ is biting; garments declined to $935 million for the four months; an 11.6% drop from the same period last year, and it is going to get worse for the next 6 months or longer! Agricultural exports did well (that’s how we managed a 10.7% increase in exports) improving by 33% since tea prices were high. Rubber prices were high too but this is a two edged sword. Rubber prices improve when oil price drive up synthetic costs; overall however, only a small fraction of what expensive oil costs us directly is recouped indirectly through better rubber prices.

There is also the possibility of a backlash from the US - due to slow recovery or for political reasons - and this is serious. Not many people realise the US is our largest export market (22%), followed by the UK 12%, then Germany, Belgium, Italy and India, in that order and all about 5% each. Nope, the Peoples Republic, the Burmese Gorillas and the theocrats in Teheran can’t help much with trade.

Nevertheless, let us leave the political scare aside and factor in only the loss of GSP+, as it is already a reality. Then my guess is that our export earnings in 2010 will fall short of three times $2.31 million (first four months); that is, for the whole year it will be less than $7 billion. Given my expectation of a $14 billion import bill, we are heading towards a foreign trade deficit that will be in the $7 billion region.

Normally we plug this hole with remittance from the Middle East and foreign grants, loans and borrowing. Borrowing includes sovereign bond sales at premium interest rates. The hot money that flows in when we open Treasury Bill and share markets to foreign investors, in effect, serves the same purpose - I only mention this, I do not object. Remittances in the first four months of 2010 were up 14.5% at $1.2 billion, that is remittances fell short of the $1.88 billion trade deficit.

Therefore our four-month deficit on the trade plus remittances account was $680 million. Since I have argued that the trade deficit will widen in the rest of the year while remittances are likely to hold steady, we are facing a deficit of more than three times $688 million, perhaps $2 to 2.5 billion over the year in the current account portion of our balance of payments.

Therefore the government still needs a lot of foreign investments and grants, bilateral and multilateral loans at concessional rates and commercial borrowing at market rates to plug the rest of the hole. This brings me to the next part of this article, foreign debt.

Sri Lanka’s burgeoning foreign debt

The government’s total debt at the end of 2009 was Rs4.16 trillion rupees (about 86% of GDP) of which about $15.5 billion (Rs1.76 trillion) was foreign debt. Of this $15.5 billion, $4.3 billion was commercial debt (at market interest rates which include a risk premium for dicey countries), and the remaining $11.2 billion government-to-government or multilateral concessional debt. Domestic debt was Rs2.4 trillion so the domestic to foreign debt ratio (2.4 to1.76) was 58 to 42. Worsening balance of payments means that the government will have to borrow more or get more concessional aid from overseas to meet the shortfall. To avoid social conflict at home the government will not be able to carry through its salary restraints, price increases and welfare cuts to the extent that it would like to, so the deficit will rise. What is happening is that we need new loans to pay off maturing loans, we need to grow the loans since we are getting deeper into deficit, and we have the problem of paying interest on growing debt. This is a triple whammy! Commercial borrowing attracts higher interest rates (sovereign bond issues for example) and the interest rates, and schedules for repayment of principal, on the burgeoning Chinese loans are hidden from the public by the government.

In years 2010 and 2011,fortunately, not many loans mature, but 2012 is a calamity year. The foreign debt servicing schedules for the four years from 2009 to 2012, in millions of $, in the format (total/repayment/interest), are as follows:
(2009: 1043/815/228),(2010: 810/544/266),(2011; 954/652/302),(2012: 1504/1224/315).

After 2012 the picture is consistently gloomy and the figures for 2015 in the same format are (1696/1449/247) in millions of dollars. When total foreign debt servicing needs reach nearly $1.7 billion in 2015, well that will be the same as 28% of the entire government revenue in 2009! Add to this the burden of servicing local debt where interest rates are not concessional - it’s not a good macroeconomic picture at all. Budget deficit, domestic and foreign debt, and external trade all look bad.

© Lakbima News

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Tamils in Sri Lanka seeking asylum: A need no more?

By Rev. John Barr | Uniting World
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The island of Sri Lanka is likened to a tear drop in the Indian Ocean. This is, perhaps, a most apt image given the country’s tumultuous history. In 2009, we all cried and opened our hearts to over 280,000 Tamil civilians that were interned in detention centres run by Sri Lankan security forces. Humanitarian aid was severely restricted and ‘unexplainable disappearances’ were frequent.

My recent journey to the north of the island gave a chilling insight into the issues that thousands of Tamils continue to face. While much of the conflict is over, it is clear that many people have been unable to access their most basic needs. My experience left me questioning whether Tamils are truly safe from harm today.

During the one week trip to assess the situation, I visited several holding centres for Tamils who have been released from detention camps and await permission from security forces to return to their homeland.

These holding centres are extremely dire places. Food is scarce and access to basic health care is minimal.

One of my strongest memories is my visit to a centre located in the grounds of the former Killinochchi Central College, where some 335 families reside today.

The top floors of the main building have been blasted by artillery and mortars during the war. The people who live there receive food from the United Nations World Food Programme, but access to basic health care remains extremely limited.

A doctor from the Jaffna Diocese Green Memorial Hospital in Jaffna visits the centre for a few hours whenever possible to perform medical checkups. During this visit I met Annamma, a young mother of three children. One of her legs had been blown off during the recent war. Her husband was incapacitated due to a bullet lodged in his spine.

Annamma’s family were Tamils that had fled Jaffna in 1995 to rebuild their lives in Vanni, an autonomous Tamil region. Their future now remains in serious jeopardy.

Annamma told me she is “sick of being here”. She is “sick of waiting… all we do is line up and wait… for food, for water, for a shower…”. Thousands of others are in this same situation. There was a depressing sense of hopelessness in this holding centre.

These families are waiting here for land to become available where they can resettle, but much of the land remains riddled by land mines and is as such uninhabitable.

At another centre, the people were in no better condition.

I met a man who had lost both his legs. Another man suffered shrapnel wounds in his stomach. Then a woman next to me collapsed to the ground and gripped her head tightly, convulsing on the ground. People tell me that this happens to her frequently, a result of shrapnel lodged in her brain.

Today approximately 45,000 people have no choice but to continue to live in these centres scattered throughout the country’s north.

Back here in Australia, we hear little more than reports that we war is over and that conditions are improving in Sri Lanka. But my first hand view highlights that the Tamils there continue to experience a real sense of subjugation and humiliation.

Many queue for hours to access to food and health care. They wait for months on end, uncertain of when they will be able to return to their land and start rebuilding their lives. There are no places for Tamils to mourn, and many do not know what has happened to their loved ones. Trauma is a massive issue, and there is no closure for so many people.

An urgent question in Australia concerns the wellbeing of Tamils from the north and the east of Sri Lanka seeking asylum in Australia. Many are detained in terrible conditions with limited access to their most basic needs.

Are Tamils truly safe in Sri Lanka today? From what I saw the answer in no. We have a responsibility to continue opening our hearts to the many thousands of Tamils who face danger in Sri Lanka today.

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John Barr is Associate Director for Church Solidarity (Asia)

© Uniting World

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Sri Lanka: Corrupt to the core

By Frederica Jansz | The Sunday Leader
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We have been a nation that had been ruled by pink faced colonialists. As a result we have learnt to be submissive. Absolutely. Since the last of the colonialists left (the British in 1948) the locals positioned to take over governance and administration including public service mimicked the colonialists. The people (read most of us) by nature therefore have been submissive and deferential towards the hierarchy.

Despite the fact that Sri Lanka since 1948 has gained notoriety in not just producing good tea and excellent cricketers but in having also to her detriment and disgrace produced some of the most corrupt politicians this side of the Western hemisphere. With a growing track record of human rights violations Sri Lanka has had to employ or seek foreign expertise by paying for expensive lobbyists in the UK and US for her public relations exercises vis-a-vis the West namely to help clear her fractured record. The PR firm Bell Pottinger’s campaigns to defend the worst and most corrupt politicians and governments in the world including those in Sri Lanka is a case in point.

Bell Pottinger hired Qorvis Communications as a subcontractor for its work with the government of Sri Lanka, starting December 1, last year, according to a filing with the US Department of Justice. Qorvis is providing media relations and monitoring, crisis communications planning, and stakeholder representation in the US. The budget is approximately $483,000.

Groundviews in March this year carried an interesting article which spotlighted Bell Pottinger as one of the UK’s largest public relations firms, spin doctors par excellence for those who can afford them, including amongst many others, the Government of Iran, members of the Government of Saudi Arabia and in the past, General Augusto Pinochet. The British oil company Trafigura was also a key client, yet despite this was named and shamed in the media for uncontrolled dumping of hundreds of tonnes of highly toxic oil waste around Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, in August 2006. Though contested, there are media reports that suggest Bell Pottinger is also involved in lobbying the EU on behalf of the Sri Lankan government, perhaps primarily on the issue of the GSP+ extension.

As the news report above indicates, they do not come cheap. The sum of $483,000 noted in this report is for a sub-contract, and comes to around Rs. 55 million today. Details of the original contract awarded by our government to Bell Pottinger remain undisclosed, and involve expenses probably much higher than this figure.

Can Sri Lanka spare this money? How was the process of selecting and awarding the tender to Bell Pottinger arrived at? Who was involved? Given that these are public expenses, have they been tabled in parliament to date? If not, why not?

Though freely available on the web since January this year, this information has not been prominently featured or robustly questioned in mainstream media to date.

The foreign rulers having left saw Sri Lankans taking over the political and administration of our day to day lives and it has now eroded with politicians taking full control of our day to day lives – resulting in a nation of bystanders who starting with the Fourth Estate lack the initiative or the gumption to ask what this government is doing with tax payers monies?

The case of Bell Pottinger is a classic case in point. As Groundviews quite rightly asserts that in the books of Bell Pottinger these may be relatively small sums of money, but these are huge sums of public finances spent under successive governments, with little or no accountability and transparency. Individuals, both in Sri Lanka and in England, have clearly benefited from these outrageous contracts.

These issues clearly cannot be swept under the rug.But sweeping issues under the carpet is a national past time in Sri Lanka particularly so among those of the Fourth Estate who for reasons unknown to their readers continue to practice a huge amount of self-censorship that is consistently but surely eroding freedom of movement, freedom of speech and human rights in this country.

Those who believe that the country’s justice system treats everyone equally is living in a fool’s paradise. This may be true of all justice systems in the world. While some countries try to make it more fair than the others, let us accept the truth that there will never be a system that is entirely fair.

A good lawyer has a better chance of keeping one out of jail than a bad one. The only problem is that good lawyers cost a tidy some. So by that yard stick alone, the poor starts with a major handicap. Add the influence peddling of the elite and bribery and corruption , the system is highly tilted in favour of the rich and famous. However, the system gets some sort of credibility when once in a while a rich or a famous person ends up at least in remand prison despite of his wealth and connections.

The credibility of the justice system takes a huge knock when the rich and the famous even after being sent to prison end up in the relatively luxurious Merchants Ward of the General Hospital.

When tens of thousands of people are incarcerated in prisons for petty crimes, the man allegedly behind the biggest ever white collar crime, Deshamanya Lalith Kotelawala spent his time in a hospital room. To add insult to injury his wife, Lady Dr. Sicille Kotelawala, a co conspirator in the multi billion rupee fraud with an open arrest warrant had an even better time — in Singapore.

The fixing is so blatant that it is just ugly if not out right disgusting. The Kotelawala couple were both living it up until the collapse of the Golden Key company. Neither of them had such great health issues that they needed to be permanently warded in hospital.

In fact, when Deshamanya Kotelawala was out on bail, he did not need immediate and full time medical treatment. Neither did his wife who was gallivanting in South Asia spending her ill gotten wealth.

Of course, if either needed urgent full time medical care one can be assured that neither would have selected the Merchants Ward. It would have been an expensive hospital overseas. After all, the bills would have been paid by the not so smart investors in the Ceylinco Conglomerate.

It is this kind of “in your face” fixing of the system by the elite that lays the seeds for armed rebellion. A person who steals a few hundreds of thousands of rupees spent time in a dirty prison cell with another 20 or 30 people. But people who steal billions end up in hospital — that too in a private room or even better in a nice comfortable five star hotel in Singapore.

All this was while thousands of depositors are still in anguish unable to pay for their groceries, medicine and rent. What struck me at the time was why the depositors instead of demonstrating in street corners did not just break into the Merchants Ward and physically carry Deshamanya Kotelawala back to the remand prison.

So I come back to the point I made at the beginning of this copy. We are a nation of bystanders – submissive and subservient.

It says a lot about the people of this country. That there is no rioting taking place in all of Sri Lanka’s prisons right now with the inmates demanding urgent medical treatment in hospital. Surely they would sound reasonable enough to settle for the relative comfort of the prison hospital for the rest of their prison term? Even more stunning is that there aren’t tens of thousands of fundamental right cases being filed by prisoners asking for immediate transfer to the General Hospital ( non paying ward). Surely an absolutely healthy person would end up sick after spending a few months in the hell holes we call prisons.

The truth is that the tens of thousands of inmates languishing in prison were not clever enough to take thousands of people for a hike and use that money to grease the palms of politicians and high officials or and when the game is up, still beat the system.

The fact is that Sri Lanka does not need prisons. We should turn all the prisons into comfortable hospitals for the inmates with paying wards for the rich. By doing so, we can at least provide equal treatment to those who break the law. Now that would be justice for all – fair and equal.

© The Sunday Leader

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No arrests on "Siyatha TV" attack

By Gandhya Senanayake | Daily Mirror Online
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The police are continuing investigations into the Siyatha arson attack and are yet to make any arrests, police spokesman SP Preshantha Jayakody told Daily Mirror online. It has been one week since the attack.

More than 40 computers, several air-conditioning units and other electronic equipment were damaged due to the arson attack which occurred on the 30th of July this year.

The Main Control Room (MCR) of the Siyatha television was also damaged, temporary suspending its broadcast. Meanwhile the court had instructed the police to conduct investigations and take the perpetrators behind the attack into custody.

© Daily Mirror Online

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